Aptima Demos Tools at GEOINT 2012 for Analysts to 'Zoom-In' and Find Meaning

Better sensors and bigger data create new challenges. Faced with the exponential growth of geospatial and intel data, how can analysts handle and find meaning in this deluge of information? To help improve their performance, Aptima, which applies expertise in human behavioral modeling and advanced analytics, is demonstrating three technologies at the GEOINT 2012 Symposium in Booth #1738.

Intelligent Visualization: Zoom-in with a touch or a word

IMAGINE™ delivers a novel way to interact with imagery using a multimodal, naturalistic environment. The IMAGINE software fuses voice, gestures, and touch commands within the context of the analyst’s tasks to improve spatial awareness and search performance. Conventional workflows that rely on window, mouse, and keyboard tools require users to re-orient themselves, disrupting their cognitive and visual momentum. More natural methods of interaction can reduce the effort required to operate software, allowing analysts to maintain focus on the task at hand. For example, analysts can drag, resize, and rotate images within the workspace using familiar multi-touch gestures, then point to a location on the image and use a quick verbal command to open a new window zoomed-in to that area. Alternatively, if the room is noisy or the user prefers touch interaction to voice, the zoom window can be added with a simple drag and drop motion. IMAGINE will also interpret and reason about users’ inputs and tasks to enhance and personalize the immersive experience, and better align with their workflow.

Pattern Recognition: Finding the ‘needle in the haystack’ in Multi-INT data

Everyday human behaviors form patterns – from mundane activities to adversarial tactics, techniques, and procedures. But these patterns are often hidden from view in a vast canvas of irrelevant behaviors and terabytes of Multi-INT data. Is it a threat that one vehicle performs a U-turn while all of the other cars proceed straight? Aptima’s Pattern Recognition Solutions help analysts zoom-in on the most salient behaviors in HUMINT and IMINT by separating the innocent from the dangerous, the irrelevant from the relevant. Algorithms for event detection and behavior recognition identify signature activities in hundreds of thousands of track observations. These tools and technologies then establish connections and relationships amongst persons of interest. The result: analysts can quickly extract actionable intelligence from streams of Multi-INT data, inferring the type and location of adversarial behaviors, when threats are likely to occur, and by whom.

Social Analytics to answer “What if?”

In a violent tribal area, how will a multi-ethnic population react to counterinsurgency, or a school reconstruction project? Given today’s comprehensive military operations – from the battlefield to disaster relief – planners must understand the human terrain to anticipate the consequences of interventions. As an agent-based computer simulation, Aptima’s SCIPR™ models the socio-cultural environment, allowing planners to pose alternative ‘what if’ scenarios, and forecast the cause and effect of activities on diverse, multi-identity populations. SCIPR also tracks the flow of ideas and sentiment through the electronic landscape, and how influence moves through groups contagiously, to coalesce support or incite unrest. The SCIPR platform takes in diverse data, from patrol observations, to blogs, news sites, and real-time social platforms like Twitter, enabling military planners and analysts to quickly zoom-in on and monitor relevant cross-cultural trends.